"But she snowballed me first, and called out that I was nobody’s child, and was taken out of the streets, and such like. I couldn’t stand that, anyhow. I had to whack her, Comfort."
“No you hadn’t,” said Comfort, sternly, and at the same time gesticulating earnestly with the fish-fork. “It wasn’t your part to do any punishin’, whatsomever. Leastways, no punishment but one.”
"And what’s that?" demanded Nelly, making large A’s and O’s in the steam that had settled on the windows. Here Martin suddenly put down a big newspaper he had been reading in a corner, and which had hidden him entirely from view.
“Have you so soon forgotten your old rule of good for evil, Nell?” he asked. “Don’t you know that is what Comfort means?”
Comfort nodded at him approvingly.
“But Melindy is ugly, powerful ugly, Martin,” said Nell, coloring, “and anyway she will knock all us little girls. It’s born in her. I think she must have been meant for an Indian, that pulls the hair off your head, like mother told us about. Doing good to Melindy is just of no account at all.”
“Did you ever try it?” asked Martin.
“Well, no-o. You see I could tell it was of no use. And Miss Harrow, she stands Melindy on a chair with a paper cap on her head, every day, at dinner-time.”
“Poor girl,” said Martin, “I am sorry for her.”
"I’m not," said Nell, promptly, “it keeps her from mischief, you know.”